A liquid crystal display apparatus of a vertical alignment mode turns on/off light from a backlight for each pixel using a birefringence of a liquid crystal and a polarization. In such a liquid crystal display apparatus, liquid crystal molecules are aligned vertically under no voltage application. Therefore, a black display can be performed by setting polarizing plates placed on both sides of a liquid crystal cell so that absorption axes of polarizers are perpendicular to each other. A white display can be performed as follows. The liquid crystal is inclined by applying a voltage in each of the directions of 45°, 135°, 225°, and 315° from the direction of the absorption axes of the polarizers, whereby polarization direction of linearly polarized light is rotated by 90° due to the birefringence of the liquid crystal, and consequently, light is transmitted therethrough, and a white display can be performed. However, this is limited to the case where a screen is viewed in a front direction. In the case of a black display, when a screen is viewed in an oblique direction, for example, when a screen is viewed in a direction of 45° from absorption axes of polarizers of polarizing plates, liquid crystal appears to be aligned obliquely, and not being aligned vertically. Therefore, light in this direction has its polarization state changed due to the birefringence of the liquid crystal, and cannot be absorbed completely by the polarizing plates. Consequently, light leakage occurs.
Further, the polarizing plates are placed so that the absorption axes of the polarizers are perpendicular to each other. However, as the viewing angle is inclined toward an oblique direction, the angle formed by absorption axes becomes apparently shifted from perpendicular. Consequently, light leakage occurs.
Therefore, in a liquid crystal display apparatus of a vertical alignment mode, an optical compensation plate that compensates for the birefringence of a liquid crystal and the axis shift of a polarizer of a polarizing plate, for example, a biaxial retardation plate is used (e.g., see Patent Document 1).
However, if an optical compensation plate to be used is targeted for light having a particular wavelength, not all light having various wavelengths output from a backlight is sufficiently compensated for, so light leakage occurs at a certain wavelength. Further, a transmittance varies depending upon the wavelength, so a phenomenon (so-called color shift) occurs in which color appears to be changed when a viewing angle is changed. In order to reduce these phenomena, there is a demand for compensating for visible light over an entire visible wavelength range.
In order to satisfy the above demand, it is disclosed that visible light is compensated for, using a compensation layer which has a negative thickness direction retardation (nx=ny>nz) having positive refractive index wavelength dispersion (positive dispersion) and a retardation plate which has negative refractive index wavelength dispersion (reverse dispersion) compensating for the axis shift of a polarizer of a polarizing plate (Patent Document 2). However, according to this technology, light leakage or a color shift is not sufficiently suppressed. Further, with the liquid crystal panel described in Patent Document 2, unevenness caused by attachment is large, which does not withstand the practical use in many cases.    Patent Document 1: JP 2003-270442 A    Patent Document 2: JP 3648240 B